Trypan Blue

Trypan Blue is an azo based, hydrophilic, tetrasulfonated blue acid dye widely utilized for assessing cell viability. As an easy method to determining the viability of cells, Trypan Blue will stain dead cells with permeable membranes blue, while the dye is excluded by most living cells and their intact membranes thereby allowing visual determination of living versus dead cells. Although Trypan Blue is predominately used for assessing cell viability of cultured cells, other applications for this dye have been reported. In rat abdominal organ slices Trypan Blue has been utilized to determine cell viability as well as islet cell cluster cell viability from caprine pancreatic samples.